this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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Should Europe wean itself off US tech? (www.bbc.com)
submitted 4 months ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] Humanius@lemmy.world 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I agree with most, but I'm not sure your Visa and Mastercard alternatives are realistic.

  • Wero is only rolled out in a select few countries at this point. On top of that, to my knowledge, you can only use it for online transactions and not in-store purchases.
  • Monero is a crypto-currency. Crypto is not a scalable solution to payment traffic at all.

Sadly there is no great, widespread alterantives to Visa and Mastercard at the moment, so you are going to have to figure out what solution works wherever you live. This cannot be answered by a blanket replace X with Y list.

The real solution to breaking the Mastercard and Visa duopoly is the government stepping in and either taking care of it themselves, or fostering European competition. This is not something individuals can solve by simply switching to a non-existant alternative.

[โ€“] obsidianfoxxy7870@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I would feel though that Europe has a lot more of a chance then America at being able to make an alternative.

I would love to see an open standard for transactions that can come with the same protections or similar that you can get with credit cards for fraud.

[โ€“] Humanius@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Wero is a good alternative that is in the process of being rolled out.

However, the main issue is that that rollout is painfully slow, and seemingly is not being accelerated in what is frankly an existential threat to European sovereignty.

[โ€“] Mihies@programming.dev 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Read about Digital Euro that has a big chance to be a great alternative to Visa/Matercard. Coming possibly in one or two years. And yes, at this point, it requires at least a state or union of states (EU) backing. Edit: And I recently learned there is GNU Taler as well.

[โ€“] Taalnazi@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

You're completely right; it is true that Wero is only rolled out in a few countries now. But it's also new and basically going to be a continuation of iDEAL (a nicer name imo) at a European level.

Monero is indeed crypto and whether it's scalable, I do not know. But what attracts is that it's much more decentralised, I feel. It's like Ethereum in that regard.

I also agree with you that breaking down the duopoly is necessary and should be done by the European governments. In fact, I think it's the simplest way to foster extra competition. Break up Visa and Mastercard and introduce a few European competitors.